Wow, that was fun. I just

got back into my apartment after an hour of being locked out. One of the dryers in the basement of my apartment building stopped working so I had to dry my clothes in two separate loads. It takes an hour to dry so at 1:00am my clothes were finally done. I walked out of the door and shut it realizing as soon as it shut that it was locked and I don't have my keys. This has happened to me before and I happen to have a key hidden under the window, which takes several steps to get to. I'll go ahead and tell you since I won't have my key there anymore. First, you have to climb over the railing so it looks like you are going to jump off the balcony (I am on the second floor). Second, you have to turn around and stretch your left leg out until you can put you foot on the window sill. Third, you have to lift up on the top part of the window (there is no handle or grip on the bottom) to open it enough to get to the key. Fourth, you kind of have to do the steps in reverse with the key in your mouth to get back. It is very difficult and it would be kind of dangerous for someone to get to it so I feel pretty secure about it. Anyway, back to the story. So I get to the step where I have to open the window and it won't open. The locking thing doesn't lock so I knew it wasn't that. Then I remember that my landlord painted the windows and that they might be stuck from that. In my strange / dangerous position I can't get a good grip so had to find another way to stand. Fortunately my landlord is lazy and still has about 8 ladders laying around from painting the windows so I grabbed one, climbed up the window, and started pushing. Nothing happened, not even a noise from the window yielding. Then I noticed that I couldn't even see a gap between the window and the sill. So at this point, it is 27 degrees and snowing with a bit of wind and I am wearing sandals with socks, a polar fleece, and my back karate pants. I am friggin' cold. I thought that if I had a thin piece of metal I could kind of cut out the paint holding the window closed on the bottom, so I started looking around. I found a 15in square piece of metal in the laundry room so I tried using that to break the seal. I was able to slide it under parts of the window so I kept working it until I could see a gap almost all the way across the bottom. Then I tried lifting again. Nothing happened!! I tried until my hands ached from pushing and still it wouldn't even budge. Then I tried prying it with the metal square cover thing and it just bent. I started looking at the window and realized the sides were painted shut too!! There was no way I could get my giant metal sheet in there. So now I am kind of frustrated / angry / worried / friggin' cold and I start climbing down the ladder when I notice I can sort of see the key in the gap. It was taunting me. I was so cold I had to walk back down to the laundry room to warm up. My grandparents live about half a mile from my apartment so while I was getting warm I decided I should walk there to see if grandpa had some tools I could use. I changed my clothes (they were warm from the dryer), put on some thick work socks to go with my sandals and headed off towards the grandparents house. Grandpa sometimes leaves the garage door unlocked so I thought I had a chance of getting in. On my way, I kept going over other options to get in, like borrowing grandpa's truck to drive to my parents house to get their copy of the key. I decided this was the best course of action because I did a little damage to the window with the metal cover thing and I didn't want to have to pay for it. I also ran over what I was going to say to my grandparents when I showed up on their door step at 1:00am in sandals saying I was locked out and need a vehicle. I never did figure that one out all the way. Anyway, I finally made it to their house and tried the knob. Locked. Then I tried the garage door combination thing but I didn't know the code. So I went around front and rang the door bell. It made a piteous ding-dong noise that wouldn't wake up an over-caffeinated Jack Russel terrier. I really didn't want to go banging on their bedroom window in fear that I may give them heart attacks or grandpa may shoot me, so I decided to check the truck to see if it was unlocked. I walked over and tried the door. Success!! Of course, there were no keys in it. However, grandpa's well stocked tool box was there. I grabbed a chisel, a flat head screwdriver, and a putty scraper thing, put them in my pocket, and started walking home. On the way back, I started thinking how they would probably call the cops if they actually did wake up to the door bell and I walked away too soon. So they whole way back I am expecting to be arrested. I finally make it home and climb the ladder. Since the key is visible I decide to just go for it and screw the paint cutting idea. I punch in with the screwdriver and wiggle it around until I can see the key completely and then I leveraged it out with the putty scraper thing. After about 5 minutes I finally managed to dislodge the key from the window with only "minor" damage to it. You have to be on a ladder to see it but who cares. So I went down, got my laundry, and let myself in. Then I decided I should probably take the tools back (and make sure they didn't wake up and call the cops) so I grabbed my car keys (which have an apartment key on the keychain) and headed back back to return grandpa's tools. So now it is 3:20am and I finally got warm and I am going to bed. Now all I need to do is find a new hiding place for my key that my landlord can't mess up. I hope your night was better than mine.